Deaf News: Deafness experts in America say deaf children should be bilingual and learn sign language

Deafness experts in the US, writing in a journal called Pediatrics, have said that deaf children should be bilingual, and that “the benefits of learning sign language clearly outweigh the risks” for deaf children, even if they are given a cochlear implant.

For years many (but not all) hearing specialists have advised that learning sign language may interfere with deaf children’s ability to make the most of learning to speak and use the hearing they have got.

Deaf people have vehemently disagreed – citing the importance of early communication and the benefits of communicating visually in sign language.

Now, Fox News has reported that nine experts writing in the journal have concluded that learning to sign along with speech is better than focusing only on spoken communication.

Extract from Fox News:

Parents of deaf children face a critical responsibility to learn and use sign language, according to a majority of hearing experts quoted in the journal Pediatrics, although the question of whether or not to sign has grown increasingly controversial.

Ten thousand infants are born yearly in the U.S. with sensorineural deafness, and data suggest that half receive cochlear implants, small devices that help provide a sense of sound to profoundly deaf individuals.

While some specialists advise that all deaf children, with or without cochlear implants, learn sign language, others fear that learning sign language will interfere with the demanding rehabilitation needed to maximize the cochlear device. Still others worry that asking parents to learn a new language quickly is too burdensome.

In an “Ethics Rounds” feature in Pediatrics, nine experts from hearing and language-associated fields share their perspectives and conclude, “The benefits of learning sign language clearly outweigh the risks. For parents and families who are willing and able, this approach seems clearly preferable to an approach that focuses solely on oral communication,” in which the child would depend only on the cochlear device or other auditory-verbal approaches.

John Lantos, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, writes in the journal, “The more languages they learn, the better these children will be able to communicate.”

Lantos told Reuters Health that too many children who receive cochlear implants fail to achieve full functionality in the hearing world. “If the idea is to give kids the most potential to communicate in the most ways that they can, it seems like learning both is the best approach.”

Linguist Donna Jo Napoli contributed one of the most urgent arguments for full adoption of sign language. “Children should be surrounded by sign language as much as possible as soon as the audiological status is determined,” she told Reuters Health. “If the child gets a cochlear implant and does well with it, fantastic. Then the child is bi-lingual.”

Its about time that professionals start to recognised that deaf children benefit from both oral and sign language skills. Its better for both communication and development of the deaf identity 🙂
However they are a bit slow on the uptake… We’ve been saying this for years!!

I welcome the news that members of the medical profession are now adhering to the Human Rights model of disability and are now advocating for Sign Language to be an essential part of the early and long term development of deaf children alongside other interventions.

Would love to read the whole research article and not just the abstract though. I’m really interested in this subject as it supports what my gut has been telling me all along. I was advised by some professionals to not sign with my profoundly deaf child, yet encouraged to sign with him by other professionals. Getting a diagnosis that your child is deaf when he is only 4 weeks old is scary and overwhelming. I was already a parent to a hearing baby, and I thought that I had the ‘how to be a great parent thing’ in hand! I was so concerned that I wouldn’t be able to give this tiny, perfect, but different, baby everything that he needed – that I needed to learn a whole new ‘toolkit’ of parenting skills. You have to adapt what you do so much, from having to change from ‘sssshhhhing’ them to sleep, to singing to them, to communicating, not startling them when you suddenly appear in their view or touch them…. etc etc. Then to have professionals disagree with each other is so confusing, especially about something so fundamental as communication. Luckily, I had already done some baby signing with my first born, and he knew 60 signs by 14 months old, by 16 months his speech caught up with his signing so we didn’t use the signing anymore for communication much but continued to learn new signs ‘for fun’ – with an under 2 year old! I was so lucky that I had the experience that signing certainly didn’t hinder his speech, but I felt helped his understanding and communication, lowered his frustration and so massively helped his overall development and our strong relationship. My youngest son picked up signing so easily, and was signing very young. Our signing skills progressed by us having local deaf adults come to the house for an hour a week to teach us some deaf awareness and going through the signs for specific ‘child related’ topics such as bath time, feeding, play time, animals. I’m aware most people aren’t as lucky as us. When my son was 15 months he had cochlear implants, he responded at switch on and signed that he ‘heard pig’. We were in tears. Without sign he couldn’t have done that. Again some professionals told us to now stop signing or he would rely on this rather than speech. How can you take away communication from anyone, let alone a baby. It seemed cruel, and obviously we told them in no uncertain terms that we wouldn’t be stopping. 6 weeks later my son – at only 18 months – actually said ‘more, more’ more’, when he wanted some more butter on his cracker. Without sign there’s no way that he would have known what the concept was. Naturally, we dropped the specific signs when he learnt the words ‘mummy’ ‘daddy’ ‘milk’ ‘more’ etc were dropped within a few months, but if he looked confused or didn’t understand we just did the sign and said the word again. We did this by instinct as when you’re looking after a baby and a 2 year old your hands are rarely empty, so it meant we could continue to chat without having to put everything down! The implants opened up another great method of communication and we appreciate everything the implants have given him. When you’re pushing a baby in a pushchair you want to tell them about everything that you can see – it’s hard to sign when you’re pushing a pushchair up a hill for example! My son is now 5 and above age appropriate for his speech and language and definitely prefers to speak. I think that is just his preference and his individual choice. He understands sign and will use it when he thinks it is necessary – he uses it to babies a lot and also to us when he is explaining something that we’re not understanding! Very sweet and very clever! I’m aware that his individual choice could have gone the other way and he could have preferred to sign – who am I to take that choice away from him? I’m also aware that in the future he could change his mind and feel more comfortable around deaf BSL users and so prefer to use sign. At the age of 5 I feel like I have given my son the choices that I wanted to and set him in good stead for his future. I’m now finishing my BSL level 3 and still loving learning this wonderful language and continue to teach both of my boys. Sorry for long post 🙂

I think great that ur son doing both and u willing use sign still because that is parts of him also part of u too in his world. He learning both worlds deaf and hearing.. just like me. But only thing is I against CL , why my friend died from it. Long ago . I’m totally deaf so none of my family willing to sign at all. So, I move on with my life and made friends with others who understand how we feel .Please continue loving ur son the way he is and u should be proud of him . He be successful in life ok why so many deaf ppls already have so far .. so can he. Just believe in him.

I think part of the concern is that ASL discourages/minimizes speech or listening; therefore people may forget to use voice or provide activities that promote listening. Hearing aids and CI’s are not like glasses. Listening is 90% cognitive, so it requires a lot of focus and time to develop listening skills. I think that is the primary concern some have. One cannot compare the ability of hearing children to acquire listening skills with the ability of D/HH to develop listening skills. Hearing children with ASL as their first language easily pick up spoken language by being in places where people, by overhearing others, or t.v./radio. But D/HH children must have many direct/focused listening opportunities in order to maximize their auditory potential. Sometimes it is tricky to balance the two languages which are also in two different modalities. Most bilingual situations are two languages but with the same modalities (ex: Spanish and English). My 2 cents.

Part of the cognitive issue is turn-taking, and knowing when communication is happening. Many orally raised deaf said that when they went to Gallaudet and learned sign, their communication skills OVERALL improved to the point their hearing families noticed– and the deaf were speaking to their families only in speech.

The difference was in: confidence, vocabulary, cognition, articulation, positive feedback, and also recognizing (from other deaf) when they were missing out on communication and when they should check back on their group mates, and lower frustration levels overall. Listening, even for CI users, involves LOOKING at people when they’re speaking. ASL makes that a natural habit, even a joy, rather than a source of constant frustration and anxiety.

It is very common for orally raised deaf or hard of hearing folks to have subtle social skills or theory of mind deficits due to the asymmetrical communication and social stress that the attempt to function orally causes.

Too many deaf folks get diagnosed with ADDHD precisely because they never really got taught the greater rules of how to tune into others and hearing folks forget that their deaf kids “who speak so well” can’t hear them or understand them when they’re not looking at them.

Assuming that ASL discourages speaking or listening is actually incorrect by a wide margin. It encourages USE of language, social interaction and conversation– which in turn encourages speaking and listening or other communicative strategies in situations where ASL cannot be used.

The previous doubts about ASL was not about deaf people failing to speak well– it was deeply rooted in 19th century eugenics. You can look up Alexander Graham Bell and his fears of a “deaf variety of the human race.” He believed deaf should not interact with other deaf for fear they’d marry each other. (Which does happen, but most of their children are not deaf.)

@Jennifer Phillips – that’s exactly my experience as an orally educated severely deaf person. I learned BSL as a university student and my mum commented within a year of my starting sign that my speech was clearer, my cadence of speech is better, I am more adept at understanding facial expression and my confidence was hugely improved and that I seemed happier overall. That has never changed and while I am still mostly-oral I do sign a bit at home and I am less terrified of dependence on hearing aids or indeed not going deafer which has happened to SO many of my deaf friends in adulthood.

In my family, I am the one who has hearing challenges…I am hard of hearing. I have four children, and when the second one was a baby, I taught him some basic signs so that he could communicate a bit even before he began to talk. (Me and my sister had learned a tiny bit of sign language “for fun” when we were little girls.) Back then, my eldest child, my daughter was helping me understand when the phone rang, etc., I had not yet gotten hearing aids. Then, I had a new baby to come along….with Cerebral Palsy. This third child was hearing, but needed communication skills in a way that my first two had never needed. We started speech therapy, and the therapist said, “We will use total communication with him, so that he can learn to say it, sign it, point to it or point to a picture of it. If he is able to say it, some of the other means of communication tools will fall by the wayside. Sign language does not hinder a child from speaking. Children do whatever is easiest for them to do, to communicate.” I was thankful she explained that. I had no fear of sign language in the first place, and I learned more signs alongside my son. This child who is still, at 15 years of age, unable to walk independently, can talk very well, although often not clearly enough for others to understand. And, because of the need to use signing, all my children still sign “yes” and “no” to me, and a couple of other signs, and that helps this hard of hearing mama. Thanks for letting me share.

This is a constant battle for every parent with a DHH child. I want my child to learn ASL as well as spoken language. She now goes to speech therapy two times a week, but have yet to find an enriched program where she can see more kids signing, and this of course is because of the fear from hearing patents that their DHH child won’t speak. I wish we parents had as much support as we get to get our children to talk as well as getting them to sign!

Our granddaughter is non-verbal due to a rare chromosome disorder that affected the speech areas of her brain. We asked many times about signing and got the same “if she signs she won’t talk” from hearing and D/deaf doctors, educators and therapists. So, I took it on myself to learn a second language and teach her. We were very lucky to find a website, signingtime.com, that has basic ASL signs. In 5 months KiKi now has a “vocabulary” of nearly 300 signs. In addition to that, listening to the videos over and over (and over and over…) her speech has improved drastically. I truly doubt that she will ever be able to communicate adequately verbally except to friends and family, but I do KNOW that with ASL and speech, she will be able to express herself.

As an adult who attended both mainstream and (oral only) deaf school, I believe we should have been taught both BSL and oral communication. Simply because when you leave school you have choices to make which in some cases are life defining. After school you need to integrate into mainstream life, get a job, build relationships etc. If a oral deaf person struggles with the hearing world they can become isolated and alone. A oral deaf person who signs has the option to join the deaf community, something which is very hard to do because they are a very close knit group… just like the film “My song”
Having two languages can open career options also, interpreter, deaf teacher, social worker etc. I think preventing children from signing, with the intention of helping them to integrate into the hearing world prevents the child from accessing a rich and rewarding future.

This is what the BSL/deaf community have been saying for a long time… policy makers and the NDCS need to be doing so much more to get behind sign language and make it easier for new parents to learn. Learning sign language needs to be made available and strongly encouraged for ALL new parents of deaf children, and most importantly funded by the government.

We have known this for years but how are we asking this to be implemented to the next generation of deaf children. I hardly know any signing ToDs and the level 1 that they did years ago and forgot is PATHETIC. They need to be doing level 3 or higher AND required to maintain their skills. There also need to be more D/deaf people in education working with deaf children as role models in various ways and ensuring the children are supported structurally as well as linguistically.

It’s all very well saying that sign language should be made available to children, parents and others who want and need to be able to communicate in this language…but my own,and others experiences are that the D/deaf community are suspicious and not very welcoming to anyone who tries to enter their domain. As we know,anyone learning BSL needs just one thing to achieve their objective… practise,practise and more practise. I feel sometimes that, for a group who are always vocal about ” losing” their collective identity, they could be perhaps a little bit more thoughtful regarding newcomers, be they Deaf, deaf,hoh or even hearing because at the end of the day welcoming people in is a good way of building this identity up.

“Should, shmould”, it’s all about CHOICES for parents and individuals. Whatever a person chooses for themselves will be fine. We never hear who these “experts” are…always so vague. Read Warren Estrabrooks books to see the other side of things. I’m getting so tired of these studies which are not helpful to a lot of people. If you want to be bilingual, and I emphasize WANT – go ahead, but stop harassing those who choose not!! This has a lot to do with Deaf Culture and how it is shrinking, and very little to do with what’s best for all individuals. Different people are different, and many oral deaf people have a deaf identity, but just in a different way with a different perspective. Being deaf means different things to different people.

There is nothing inherently incorrect about wanting a bilingual approach to language learning. The Total Communication path is not inconsistent with an Auditory approach for CI children, but it depends on the value of the teach and what is the focus. The real question is what is the goal of the parent, not the Deaf community or the Physicians. As the parent of a pre-lingual CI child, my goal was to insure that auditory approach was first and foremost which would most naturally mimic what my wife and I did with our other children. We want to learn ASL with your son and other children, but the support from the Deaf community is simply non-existant because we chose to focus on auditory approach first. Unfortunately, all the ASL resources in our area are geared toward using ASL first and speaking and hearing second.

My friend is hard of hearing to the point where she attended the state school for the deaf. She is now 49. Her family refused to learn the first sign and forbid her to use any type of sign language at home. Essentially she lived in a vacuum until she was 5 and then for 3 months every year during vacation. At 16, she left home, moved in with a friend from school who was deaf, as were his parents. Today they have 3 beautiful HEARING children who use sign as their primary language at home and beautifully spoken English in “the world”. NOT teaching a deaf/hard of hearing child is abuse. Imagine being forbidden to communicate? Finally the rest of the world is catching on.

One year I had two students who were brand new to the USA…one from.Mexico & the other from Laos. As I worked with them on basic English words (bathroom, water, hello….), I also used my minimal knowledge of ASL to support the words. Soon, both girls were using ASL to communicate with me and each other. Ever since, I have strongly believed that ASL should be the secondary language of all students!

Why stop with Deaf children? All children/families should consider being bilingual in sign language. It has so many benefits in the earliest of childhood communication, not to mention a large majority of children learn best from visual platforms. It doesn’t have to be about “Deaf vs. Hearing”. I think a big problem is a lack of information, especially to “hearing families”. We are taught to believe that ASL is for “Deaf people”. It’s a language. A great language that everyone should know the benefits of and have access to. We need to start stopping the centuries of segregation. Knowing what I know now about ASL, I work with my own children everyday teaching them signs. My only regret was that I didn’t get to learn the language earlier in my life when it would have been easier.

Absolutely WRONG! I can attest to first hand real life experience. We had to ask my son’s hearing therapist to stop teaching him sign language early on because he stopped being motivated to speak. It is easier to sign then listen and speak. There is a very critical window of time for optimal auditory and language development. If you miss that window it is GONE. Confusing the habilitation process with sign language interferes with this critical time in very early childhood. A child can always learn a second language like sign language after they have been fully habilitated.
This article disgusts me. Pediatrics was bias and irresponsible to publish such false information. The experts are wrong. We are living it in the real world!
I see the outcome of my above explanation day after day year after year at my son’s auditory/oral school which uses a purist Listening and Spoken Language method. If caught early enough…these kids don’t skip a beat. They are on par or ahead of their typical hearing peers! A total communication program does NOT produce those results. Ask for the numbers at any total communication school or program.
Yeah.. Let’s perform brain surgery and implant a baby with $100,000 + implants and NOT fully habilitate them. Grrrr…. Same goes with hearing aids.
Holding on to Deaf culture is not an excuse for disregarding real world outcomes and science.
Google brain plasticity and hearing loss to learn more. If, you’re interested in progressing.

We’re talking about training the brain to listen! Not ethics. Neuroplasticity!
Ethics doesn’t matter to the new neural connections that need to be created in the auditory and language centers of the brain. The only way to do that is access to sound and language! 100% listening and spoken language.
Total communication and ASL will inhibit this. Fully habilitate that brain and then learn the second language. ASL, Spanish, whatever!! The skies the limit. If you miss that window of optimal brain plasticity in early childhood, it is gone!!!!